Moral arguments alone not enough to justify spying, says MI6 ethics chief

Book review says reality is intelligence agencies are tasked to defend the national interest for its own sake'

MI6's ethics chief has argued that spies cannot justify their existence with moral arguments alone and must accept they exist to promote the national interest" in a struggle as potent now as it was during the cold war".

The frank argument is made in a review of a book, Spying Through a Glass Darkly, a discussion of the ethics of espionage, which argues that the entirely values-based justification for spying advanced by the author is too restrictive.